Abstract:

The textile industry is faced with many problems today. In addition to having to meet customers’ changing preferences and expectations, who wish to stay abreast of fashion trends and stand out from the crowd, it also needs to make efforts to change its image of one the biggest polluters in the world it has earned due to production processes consuming large amounts of resources that end up as piles of household waste. The circular economy (CE) model to reduce the environmental footprint seems to be the right solution for textile companies implementing sustainable development strategies. This paper discusses the principles of the CE model and makes an attempt at explaining how textile companies transition to it. It is based on the analysis of 34 textile companies sampled from among the members of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, which was conducted using a special analytical checklist compiled from the ReSOLVE and BECE frameworks. Because of the proportions and degree of integration between strategic and operational practices they used to achieve circularity, they were divided into integrated, hybrid, and selective organisations.